Top Book Blogs 09/2018

In William Makepeace Thackeray’s novel she’s an amoral social climber – yet in adaptions Becky Sharp is warm and relatableThough usually seen as an amoral, repellent schemer, William Makepeace Thackeray’s Becky Sharp has become warmer and more “relatable” in 21st-century portrayals.(Sep 1, 2018)

[Salon Books] What to read next: 5 recommended books for back to school season

[Guardian Books Blog] Tips, links and suggestions: what are you reading this week?

Your space to discuss the books you are reading and what you think of themAre you on Instagram? Then you can be featured here by tagging your books-related posts with #GuardianBooksScroll down for our favourite literary linksRead more Tips, links and suggestions blogsWelcome to this week’s blog.(Sep 3, 2018)

Out this week: Lake Success by Gary Shteyngart; The Silence of the Girls by Pat Barker; The Wildlands by Abby Geni; After the Winter by Guadalupe Nettel; Ponti by Sharlene Teo; River by Esther Kinsky; and The Golden State by our own Editor Lydia Kiesling. Want to learn more(Sep 4, 2018)

[The Millions] September Preview: The Millions Most Anticipated (This Month)

We wouldn’t dream of abandoning our vast semi–annual Most Anticipated Book Previews, but we thought a monthly reminder would be helpful (and give us a chance to note titles we missed the first time around). Here’s what we’re looking out for this month. Find more September titles at our Great(Sep 4, 2018)

[Book Forum] OMNIVORE: The Brett Kavanaugh show

The G.O.P is carrying out a sweeping transformation of the federal judiciary(Sep 4, 2018)

David Remnick will no longer be interviewing Steve Bannon as part of the New Yorker Festival next month after the invitation drew intense pushback, including the loss of several participants. “There is a better way to do this,” Remnick said in a statement. “If the opportunity presents itself(Sep 4, 2018)

[Book Forum] VIDEO: Celeste Ng on Little Fires Everywhere at the 2018 National Book Festival

(Sep 4, 2018)

[Book Forum] OMNIVORE: Early appraisal

Preparations get more aggressive(Sep 4, 2018)

[The Millions] Working with What You’ve Got: An Interview with Lydia Kiesling

Readers of The Millions know Lydia Kiesling as its current editor, corralling an eclectic group of writers and readers into a daily book blog circulated to thousands of book lovers. Lydia’s first novel, The Golden State, arrives today from Farrar, Straus and Giroux’s MCD imprint. (Sep 4, 2018)

[Salon Books] Bob Woodward’s explosive new book to reveal Trump’s White House in chaos

The famous Watergate reporter reveals a Trump White House torn apart by chaos and in-fighting(Sep 4, 2018)

Here are seven notable books of poetry publishing in September. Like by A.E. Stallings Stallings has described the “strange dream-logic connections of the rhymes themselves that lead the poem forward, perhaps into territory the poet herself had not intuited. Rhyme is a method of composition.”(Sep 5, 2018)

[Book Forum] DAILY REVIEW: Army of One

Wesley Yang’s dissident take on East Asians in America(Sep 5, 2018)

[Book Forum] OMNIVORE: Always a new low for the Trump White House

Congressional Republicans don’t even pretend to stand up to Trump anymore(Sep 5, 2018)

[Book Forum] PAPER TRAIL: Walter Mosley on history and power; Staff cuts at The Outline

The Outline has laid off six employees, including the site’s two staff writers, Fast Company reports. “This news is not fun. It sucks to cut good people,” editor Joshua Topolsky told the Wall Street Journal’s Ben Mullin. “But it is incredibly important to build something sustainable.” (Sep 5, 2018)

[Book Forum] VIDEO: James Fallows + Deborah Fallows on Our Towns at the 2018 National Book Festival

Asher looked up at all those stars again. It wasn’t right for such a sky to be shining above them when so many people had lost so much. But the sky doesn’t pay a bit of attention to the things that happen to us, the joys or the sorrows, either one.” –Silas House, Southernmost 1. I ordered(Sep 5, 2018)

[Book Forum] OMNIVORE: Vetting Kavanaugh

All-out war to stop Kavanaugh’s confirmation(Sep 5, 2018)

[The Millions] We Drew in ‘The Beautiful Book of Exquisite Corpses’: Here’s What We Came Up With

When my 13-year-old granddaughter, Lotti Boecker, visited from Germany this summer, we discovered a delightful new outlet for our shared love of drawing. The Beautiful Book of Exquisite Corpses: A Creative Game of Limitless Possibilities, edited by Gavin Edwards, is a series of incomplete drawings(Sep 6, 2018)

New York Times op-ed editor James Dao talks to CNN about his decision to publish an essay by an anonymous Trump administration official. “We felt it was a very strong piece written by someone who had something important to say and who’s speaking from a place of their own sense of personal ethics(Sep 6, 2018)

The Center for Fiction First Novel Prize announced their 7-title shortlist, narrowed down from their 26-title longlist. The prize awards $10,000 to the author of the best debut novel of the calendar year. Here is the 2018 shortlist, with bonus links where available (and several titles mentioned in(Sep 6, 2018)

[Book Forum] VIDEO: James McBride on Five-Carat Soul at the 2018 National Book Festival

(Sep 6, 2018)

[Book Forum] OMNIVORE: Hard to find

Still the major story(Sep 6, 2018)

[Book Forum] OMNIVORE: Policing and race

The (false) criminalization of black America(Sep 6, 2018)

[Salon Books] How good people can fight bias — without being defensive or expecting a prize

Social scientist and author Dolly Chugh has some words of guidance for becoming “The Person You Mean To Be”(Sep 6, 2018)

[Guardian Books Blog] After American Animals: the literary robberies Hollywood is yet to snatch up

With Bart Layton’s new true-crime film, literary robbery stories have finally found Hollywood’s spotlight. There are others lurking in the libraryIn contrast to the slew of movies devoted to art thieves (Entrapment, Ocean’s Twelve, The Thomas Crown Affair, etc), purloining books has had a poor(Sep 7, 2018)

[The Millions] Making Things Up: The Millions Interviews Elliot Reed

Elliot Reed explores adolescent loneliness in his debut novel, A Key to Treehouse Living. “This condition of loneliness and isolation is largely universal, and it’s uncomfortable, so young people find lots of ways to cope with it. There are many ways of coping,” he said. Reed’s debut follows(Sep 7, 2018)

[Book Forum] OMNIVORE: The rogue White House official who wrote that Times op-ed

American democracy is imperiled by Republicans enabling the president’s authoritarian impulses(Sep 7, 2018)

Politico reports that the Times op-ed by an anonymous Trump administration official has “raised a host of ethical and journalistic questions many have never considered before, including whether Times news reporters—who work independent of the editorial department, which published the(Sep 7, 2018)

Archives reveal some of the most cantankerous behind-the-scenes battles between judges of the Booker Prize. Rebecca West once argued that John LeCarre wrote “according to formula,” and that Wendy Owen was a “half-wit.” In 1985, a judge protested winner Keri Hulme’s The Bone People by(Sep 10, 2018)

Archives reveal some of the most cantankerous behind-the-scenes battles between judges of the Booker Prize. Rebecca West once argued that John LeCarre wrote “according to formula,” and that Wendy Owen was a “half-wit.” In 1985, a judge protested winner Keri Hulme’s The Bone People by(Sep 10, 2018)

[The Millions] When the Wreckage Is in the Writer: On Creating Death and Disaster

Although David Means is one of our best writers of sentences, one would be hard-pressed to commit any of those sentences to memory. His lines unfold and refold upon themselves like animate origami, offering lush visual imagery and word choice as pointed as an awl. Take this fragment of description(Sep 10, 2018)

[Guardian Books Blog] Poem of the week: Aristocrats by Keith Douglas

A horse and his rider are twisted into grotesque coalescence by violent warfare, in this remarkable and direct poemAristocrats: “I think I am becoming a God”The noble horse with courage in his eye clean in the bone, looks up at a shellburst: away fly the images of the shires but he puts the pipe(Sep 10, 2018)

[Book Forum] OMNIVORE: Working to contain Trump

The double crisis of the American political system(Sep 10, 2018)

[Guardian Books Blog] Tips, links and suggestions: what are you reading this week?

Your space to discuss the books you are reading and what you think of themAre you on Instagram? Then you can be featured here by tagging your books-related posts with #GuardianBooksScroll down for our favourite literary linksRead more Tips, links and suggestions blogsWelcome to this week’s blog.(Sep 10, 2018)

Out this week: She Would Be King by Wayétu Moore; Crudo by Olivia Laing; Ordinary People by Diana Evans; The Real Lolita by Sarah Weinman; The Mermaid and Mrs. Hancock by Imogen Hermes Gowar; and The Personality Brokers by Merve Emre. Want to learn more about upcoming titles?(Sep 11, 2018)